Thursday, May 29, 2008

[It's a retro review by the jaded viewer. I originally posted this review after buying the box set. Films 1-8. The memories all came pouring back. Fangoria covers and lunch box sets. And so I decided to make a list. The ultimate super duper mega crazy best to worst list. Starting from the worst movie of the franchise to the best, I'll go into why each film was either really good or really terrible. I of course never finished the list only.]

Jason Voorhees + Space = What the fuck?

The fact that he's in space is a little much isn't it? The year 2455? This is our future?

Oh boy.

Well what can you say? It doesn't get much worse than this. Our beloved slasher of slashers gets stuck in a sci fi movie. It's like Aliens but without any aliens.

As always let's go briefly over the plot.

Plot-O-Rama

Jason has been locked up within the Camp Crystal Lake research facility. The military wants to discover Jason's regeneration secrets (umm its an evil heart dude plus druids!).But Jason as always escapes and goes all killy. Rowan played by the hot (oh so hot!) Lexa Doig, cryogenically freezes Jason before she gets frozen herself. Fast forward to the future and some Canadian teenagers are on all field trip to Old Earth. (I guess we live on New Earth).Jason defrosts and goes on to kill most of the kids on the ship while the kids try to fend him off.

So let's go through the more interesting moments and the people in the flick, shall we?

Jason's sci fi slaughterhouse farm (See below)

1.) Rowan (aka Lexa Doig) the research scientist with beautiful cleavage2.) Black soldier who more than likely will try to kick some ass and save the day3.) Hot girl in very revealing futuristic clothing4.) Nerd guy5.) Hot Android (I'd like to also point out Lexa Doig and the android are both on Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda)6.) Teacher who is as an asshole

OK let's go through the 4 pieces of criteria in which all 4 are totally fucked up by this movie.

1.) Jason Voorhees

At this point in Jason Voorhees career, he's completely a supernatural zombie devoid of any human related genetics. Fuck. He still has his slasher charm but it's really running on empty. So why does this fail? Two words:

Uber Jason!!!

C'mon. Fuckin Uber Jason. So after android girl blows the shit out of Jason by using her ray gun semi automatic weapons, Jason is regenerated by nano technology and is now half metal half Robocop. He's got this dumb looking mask and is now breathing more heavily. He has fuckin body armor and somehow this machete has also turned into an uber machete. I mean talk about bastardizing our beloved slasher of slashers. This is like a punch in the stomach of all that is sacred within Friday the 13th. Jason Voorhees is a man wearing a hockey mask who drowned and likes to kill teenagers who have sex and smoke pot. He is not Robo Slasher.

2.) High body count with clever and gruesome deaths

A decent scene was Jason cryogenically freezing a girl face and then smashing it into pieces. Some soldier gets impaled on some large drill (FX baby!). Overall the gore has been totally toned down. Except for the virtual girls getting killed, all the deaths were pretty [yawn].Too many of the kills were dominated by FX. Damn the special effects!

3.) Nudity! Nudity! Nudity!

Nada. Let's see what Skinemax moments we had. Some gratuitous Lexa Doig cleavage. Some Canadian girl cleavage. Virtual girls show some boobies. That's it. The nudity has to be totally gratuitous you know? Like gratuitous shower scene, gratuitous breast shot as they dress, gratuitous skinny dipping and gratuitous nerd seeing hot girl naked. Jason X just didn't deliver the goods.

4.) An ending with a twist or a clever plot device or a reference that a sequel will be made

So Jason dies as the remaining crew escape to a ship that was trying to pick them up. Uber Jason, believed to have blown up with the ship "Grendel" is still alive and as he floats towards the rescuing ship he is richoched by the black soldier dude and floated towards new Earth's atmosphere where Jason and the soldier burn up.

We see Jason's uber mask in a new lake on New Earth as two teenagers, unknown to them make out.

ARGHHHHH!HOOOOKA! Sorry I just threw up. We're not even on Earth anymore. We're on some distant alternate dimension planet. Oh my freakin goodness. This is just plain dumb.The Recap

First of all, this is a sci fi movie. We aren't even in Crytal Lake anymore. I mean this is just waaaaay off target. I don't even know if this even qualifies. It's just hard to sit through because you don't even know what to make of this. Jason is just making an ass of himself. I mean pretend of the Alien in Alien became an Uber Alien?

We can only flush this turd down the toilet and hope the Canadians don't take our beloved horror and make this crap again.

I'd like to say for the record tha this flick had its moments. After the 13th viewing, it's actually grown on me. But 99.99% of this flick is pretty much garbage. I'm judging by standards of the franchise and this took the franchise waaaaaay down. Sorta like Part 5.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

As I perusing various horror websites, I stumbled upon the Playground Movie Reviews. There, they had a review of Anita which I read like a goofy schoolboy.

A movie about a 17 year old nymphomaniac!

This I gotta see.

I gotta admit, it was a nice change of pace from watching the constant zombies and cannibal redneck slaughter I've been watching over the last few weeks.

I even decided to have Hollywood rape my childhood by going and seeing Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. So bless all that is Swedish erotica!

Plot-O-Matic

Anita, at 17 yrs old is a nympho. She picks up dudes all over her small town. She's got an uppity, goodt two shoes sister, her parents hate her and she has no friends. But she befriends a psych student played by a young Stellan Skarsgard, who is willing to help her break her sex addiction, by giving her the one thing that can cure her...an orgasm.

Fuck yeah!

Influences

Umm. Yeah this is vintage grindhouse, predecessor to all that is Skinemax. Take your pick from other 70s erotica. Even the American stuff.

Nude-ipedia

Christina Lindberg is like naked for 85% of the movie.

She gets down and dirty with a variety of johns. There reaction is always priceless.

"You're want to do what??......for free????....OK!!!"

We typically do not have nudity here at jadedviewer.com but I mean this review definitely needed visuals. So as you can see to the right, this is the super hotness of Christina Lindberg.

Rewind the Insanity

Christina Lindberg is hot. Did I mention that? And as this is just 70s skinemax, it's got that grindhouse, scratchy film, abrupt cuts and fading audio feel to it that makes you feel like your at a sticky Times Square theatre. What more can I say? I mean she's doing every guy in town in like 20 scenes. It's sleazy classic that you can't turn your eyes away from.

So what do we get in the moments where she isn't blowing or fucking some dude.

See below!

Anita buys a hot dog.

Anita hangs out at a disco.

Anita buys a pretzel.Anita gets yelled at by her parents.

Anita gets embarrassed in school.

Anita hangs out with musicians.

Anita gets beaten up.

Anita hangs out with junkies.

Anita makes out with a lesbian counselor.

Anita strips at a XXX club.

WTF Moment

Anita gives a strip tease and all out nudey-topia to her father's male friends at a family dinner.

The Jaded Viewer's Final Prognosis

Watch it. Why not? Yeah you can view hardcore porn, but sleazy 70's erotica is done so awesome here, you may even watch for the plot (I didn't). Lindberg's protrayal of a revenge chick from Thriller: A Cruel Picture was the inspirtation for Daryl Hannah's character in Kill Bill.

But here it's all out full frontal swedish B grade erotica.

Lindberg is so cute in that girl next door sorta way, when she pouts as she eats breakfast, you want her to do something dirty and naughty....and then she does in the next scene!

In the end, she does get cured by her new "boyfriend" but at that point, you're looking for tissues. [Wink Wink].

[It's a retro review by the jaded viewer. I originally posted this review after buying the box set. Films 1-8. The memories all came pouring back. Fangoria covers and lunch box sets. And so I decided to make a list. The ultimate super duper mega crazy best to worst list. Starting from the worst movie of the franchise to the best, I'll go into why each film was either really good or really terrible. I of course never finished the list only.]

Why oh why did they make this turd? OK let's just say straight out why this is the worst of the franchise.

We got a fake Jason.

I mean that's all that has to be said right? Nothing is redeeming in this movie. The thing about the Fthe13th films is you have to grade them on a curve. They should include the following:

1.) Jason Voorhees (or his mom)2.) High body count with clever and gruesome deaths3.) Nudity! Nudity! Nudity!4.) An ending with a twist or a clever plot device or a reference that a sequel will be made

Let's go briefly through the plot.

Tommy Jarvis is a troubled teen who goes to troubled teen camp. If you remember Part 4, Tommy went postal on Jason and is now tormented by the incident.

So at the camp he (and unfortunately we) meet the following people:

1.) Dudley from Different Strokes2.) Pam some girl who befriends Tommy3.) Two greasers who get whacked4.) A redneck mom and his redneck son who are cutboard cutouts of rednecks5.) Punk rock girl who likes to listen to the Smiths6.) Some stuttering kid7.) Some fat kid8.) Some waitress and some dumbass9.) Some Michael Jackson wannabe who has gerry curls and eats burritos

Part 5 fails in all four items.

Shall we go through the list?

1.) Jason Voorhees

Nope.

For some unknown reason some ambulance driver who was the father of the retarded kid decides to use the Jason M.O. to kill. And he's lame. And they even blatantly say it's not Jason. So in case you thought it might actually be Jason they tell you it's not. How does he die in the end?He gets thrown out of the 2nd floor of a barn into some tractor with spikes. You know it's fake Jason because the hockey mask has some blue markers. WTF?

2.) High body count with clever and gruesome deaths

Nope.

You can see the body count here. I can't even recall any good ones....hell I can't recall anything about this movie. It's fading fast...oh oh it's almost gone.

3.) Nudity! Nudity! Nudity!

Ehh. A little.

There's a brief scene of some dude and girl getting it on in the middle of the woods. But they are fuckin ugly. That's it. You'll see more nudity in an Olsen twins video.

4.) An ending with a twist or a clever plot device or a reference that a sequel will be made

Huh? What? Hmm? What the hell?

So here's the ending. After Tommy and Pam kill Jason, they end up in the hospital and we have a gratuitous dream that doesn't look like a dream by Tommy as Tommy laying down on the bed stabs Pam with a knife. Then he wakes up. Cut to a scene after that ho hum pseudo scare, Pam runs into an Tommy's empty room and see's the window shattered. We then see Tommy with the Jason mask on and a knife in the backround as Pammy is about to turn around....

What the freakin fuck?

Huh?

I know he's all fucked up but cmon dude. Don't give me that shit.

I remember renting this fucker back in 1980 something and I think me and my friends were all disappointed and turned to drugs because of this film (i'm now currently addicted to heroin).

This is by far the worse ending ever put on celluloid.

The recap

So to recap this movie sucked. A lot of yapping. A lot of troubled youth I could care less about. Some damn ugly chicks and the dudes were way boring. Redneck mom and dad made me heave.

Fake Jason is Roy Burns? This is fuckin dumb. Who the fuck is Roy Burns?!?

Nothing redeeming about this film. It's so bad you would lose faith in the entire series after this flick. This fuckin sucked.

Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Every ten years in an unsuspecting town, The Tournament takes place. A battle royale between 40 of the world’s deadliest assassins. The last man standing receiving the $10,000,000 cash prize and the title of Worlds No 1, which itself carries the legendary million dollar a bullet price tag. All fights are monitored 24 hrs a day on redirected CCTV cameras and broadcast secretly to a ring of high stake billionaire gamblers.

Monday, May 12, 2008

It seems like it as the French delivered another splatter-ific, gore-hound's dream, nightmare-phobia world in Frontiere(s).

Just like Inside, this movie is filled with buckets of intense gore and bloodshed. And because of that, I'll forgive the mish mash of American horror genres they put into this mess.

Let me start off by saying, the world thinks America is filled with gun toting, inbred rednecks (with some pockets of KKK and Neo-Nazi-ish pieces of shit in there too).

Well I'm not going to say the US is a cookie cutter wonderland but Europe seems to be fucked up as well. That father from Austria comes to mind. And the French riots in 2005 shouldn't be overlooked as some major problems in France.

So it's good to know there are some inbred, cannibal neo-nazi families on the borderland of France.

Plot-O-Matic

A couple of French hipsters take off to the French frontiere aka border after their Reservoir Dogs heist in riot prone Paris. Yasmine, our pregnant femme and her tough guy boyfriend try to meet up with the other heisters and end up a hostel/inn that has that oh so fucked up family that's worse than your own during Thanksgiving

Yup. Same horror conventions that we've all seen before. But those can be forgiven when all other horror cylinders are working well.

The visuals are clever and scary. The barn interiors and butcher-ish morgue only add to the decadent setting.

And now to the scenes of gore! gore! gore!

The movie is frenetically paced with the scenes of carnage. Each chase is filled with mouting tensions between each slaughter. The ending is done with editing insanity as Ripley-like Yasmine escapes from her captors. Without these scenes of terror and unrelenting gore, Frontiere(s) would be yet another After Dark Horrorfest flick thrown into the used DVD bin.

That's the best part of it. The prudish Hollywood system would never create a movie like this with its over the top gore and savage beating of the heroine.

Frontiere(s) is currently out in limited theatrical release and it comes out on DVD on 5/13. French horror has always been cutting edge and they go to the cliff on this one. Frontiere(s) splatter and extreme scenes of carnage makes it's American counterparts look Disney-ish in comparison.

I'm not going to say this made me all giddy like Inside did. But at leastthe gorehound in me was entertained from start to finish.

Van Damme has stated he wants to make "character action". These character action STV movies started with Replicant and have continued endlessly. Post theatre Van Damme has had a few decent flicks. Replicant was actually ok. Umm. I think that was it.

Suffice it to say we really don't need to go on an in depth review of this. So I'll try to summarize in a few sentences or less.

So on to the nitty gritty cliffnotes version.

What's the plot?

Van Damme plays Jack who after his daughter ODs (yes I just told you a major spoiler) joins the border patrol and vows vengeance after the American Special Forces who are in cahoots with the Mexican cartels along the US/Mexican border.

Are the evildoers evil?

Not really.

Is the Border Patrol really inept?

Yes. And very corrupt.

Is there a lot of action?

Some gun fights ensue and Van Damme gets some good shots in.

Is there a WTF moment?

Totally. A bus armed to the teeth carrying drugs, nuns, priests and the turncoat American army baddies crosses the border with JCVD and his black sidekick in tow. Shootout ensues. Very surreal.

Is there a classic Van Damme moment?

Pretty much it's the jailhouse fight scene.Van Damme stunt double (sigh) does some awesome martial arts against a rogue inmate. It's the best scene in the film. So why don't you watch it below.

Is there a guy who outshines JCVD?

Yes. Scott Adkins fight scene with JCVD at the end reminds us what JCVD use to be.